Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Hitchens on Lebanese women

This is what Hitchens said on Lebanese women: "Speaking of sex, said NOW Lebanon, just incidentally, what did you think of Lebanese women? "Ah," he said, "the fragrant and lustrous womanhood of Lebanon requires no endorsement, it's already established itself." And it was, he added, "very much on show, if that isn't too cheap and gaudy a way of putting it, [at the Hariri memorial]. And strangely," he continued meditatively, "hardly less on show when we went to the big tent of the Party of God." It seems appropriate to draw a veil over his remarks on the salacious glances of female Hezbollah supporters." This is from the media outfit known as Now Lebanon but I call it Now Hariri. This reactionary outfit invited Hitchens to Lebanon. I have been hearing a lot about this outfit and I receive inside information on it as I receive about the Daily Star in Beirut but there is much that I can't use because the senders work there and fear for their jobs if I were to reveal what they tell me. But I can tell you that this outfit is run by a a reactionary organization called Quantum, and is run overall by a Lebanese Forces guy called Elie Khuri who has been running the Saatchi and Saatchi regional office and who allegedly help the US war to advertise the war in Arabic, and received a contract from the Hariri family to stage the Potato Revolution. Quantum is largely funded by Hariri but allegedly receives "external" funding according to some sources. The English section of Now Lebanon is separate from the Arabic section: Michael Young (the neo-conservative tedious writer for Daily Star) has an editorial role in Now Lebanon (the English section), while the Arabic section features the same faces of Hariri media in Lebanon (`Uqab Saqr, Mufffaq Harb (of the Hurra TV infamy), Walid `Abbud, among others). But their is a high turnover rate as two of the three left already. (thanks anonymous 1 and thanks anonymous 2 and thanks anonymous 3)